Insomniac
Insomniac
I squeezed my eyes shut, but it didn’t make much of a difference considering the darkness I was already engulfed in. The tears leaked from the inner corners of my eyes, no matter how much I was trying to retain them. The bed underneath me seemed harder and less comfortable than usual, not to mention freezing cold. I tried so hard to just stay still and let the soothing sounds of Radiohead lull me to sleep, but I just couldn’t get comfortable enough. Everything felt wrong. I kept twisting my body into different positions to try and find somewhere halfway comfortable, but every time I did my feet would brush against my legs like ice and a jolt would run through my body, ensuring my waking state. Damn bad limb circulation. Damn insomnia.
Yes, I am an insomniac. It’s positively dreadful. I cannot emphasize enough how horrible the feeling is when you are so inexplicably tired that the only thing you can concentrate on is the fact that your sleeplessness drives your focus entirely to the endless headache you endure. Days, nights, it’s all the same. There are no yesterdays or tomorrows. Only time. I’ve smashed several clocks since being diagnosed with this awful disorder. Watching the red glowing numbers slowly change was slowly driving me mad. It’s antagonizing. Don’t get me wrong, I do sleep. I’ve heard no one can survive going ten days straight without sleep. But I fall asleep for about five minutes before waking up again and beginning the whole process of chasing after five more minutes of escape from the world. It’s all a cycle. A terribly tiring one. One with no break. I’ve tried everything. Non-stop running, movie marathon without blinking, hypnosis, sleeping pills and none of it does any good. Not to mention the classic counting sheep. If I do recall, I reached up to seven hundred and fifty-six thousand, four hundred and twenty-six godforsaken sheep feeling so homicidal that it wasn’t safe for them to keep jumping over the fence in my mind. But my memory’s a bit hazy; it was at least eighteen months ago that this all began. It was so sudden. Without any reason or excuse. And so far without end.
In some feeble attempt to make my life seem ordered I try to make twenty-four hours distinguishable. I try to create my own yesterdays and tomorrows. The yesterdays I have no control over, but I cannot help but wonder if tomorrow is ever going to come. Do I even want it to? When you have insomnia, nothing is real, and nothing is fake. Everything just is. You find yourself detached from the world, or not so much from the world but from yourself. Like you’re watching all the events unfold from an omniscient perspective, yet still from your own eyes. It’s damn near impossible to explain the complexities. Day and night, light and dark, they’re both as wretched as the other. During the day you’re so lifeless you feel like a ghost, the only thing you can think about is how amazingly peaceful sleep would be. During nighttime, still the only thing on your mind is sleep, only there is nothing to even vaguely distract you from it, only taunt you by reinforcing the fact that you can’t have it. It’s unbearably patronizing, but you have no choice but to bear it. There’s no escape from it.
I tossed and I turned, but nothing extraordinary, like sleep, happened. This was just another night. Another long, seemingly never-ending night. Only I knew it would come to an end. Just not a happy one. This night would end; the sun would rise, and tomorrow would commence just the same as every tomorrow that has become a yesterday has done.
But did it have to? What if tomorrow never did come? What if I’ve completely been going about this the wrong way? All these months I’ve been praying for night to just end. What if, instead of waiting for it to cease, I made it stay forever? Instead of living in doubt, knowing that there is a chance this will stop just not sure if I have it… What if I made the decision? What if I called the shots? What if I made it stretch on for eternity? For my eternity.
Maybe I was just all drugged up from ineffective sleeping pills. Maybe I was sleepwalking, because after so long I was just so goddamn tired. Maybe I actually had gone crazy from lack of sleep. Choose your scenario. The doctors chose theirs. Doctor’s words aren’t truth. Just beliefs with evidence to strengthen them. But the doctors decide what would make evidence for their diagnosis, so really it just brings it back to their own belief and names difficult to pronounce. They found me passed out with a cold-hearted bullet in my upper arm. That’s right. Passed out. I was going for suicide, but the fact that I failed was a minor vexation when I was so ecstatic to find out that I’d been knocked out for ten hours due to unbearable pain. Sure, being unconscious isn’t exactly the same as being asleep, but it’s close enough for me. Why I thought that a bullet in the arm would kill me, I do not know. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I must have had pretty poor aim, seeing as apart from a deep flesh wound, I was going to be okay. Physically. They’re afraid I’ll try it again though. The doctors, I mean. I guess it’s rational for them to worry about that. If I go back to insomnia after this, I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it. When I came to, everything was real again. I was a person again, rather than a body with eyes to see things from. Faces were distinguishable, voices and words held meaning. After getting this taste of a real life again, I don’t think I could handle going back.
I haven’t tried to sleep yet. I’m scared of failure. I’m scared of myself if I were to fail. I don’t know what I’m capable of anymore. I’m only praying that this has been enough to force my body to return to normal.
Yes, I am an insomniac. It’s positively dreadful. I cannot emphasize enough how horrible the feeling is when you are so inexplicably tired that the only thing you can concentrate on is the fact that your sleeplessness drives your focus entirely to the endless headache you endure. Days, nights, it’s all the same. There are no yesterdays or tomorrows. Only time. I’ve smashed several clocks since being diagnosed with this awful disorder. Watching the red glowing numbers slowly change was slowly driving me mad. It’s antagonizing. Don’t get me wrong, I do sleep. I’ve heard no one can survive going ten days straight without sleep. But I fall asleep for about five minutes before waking up again and beginning the whole process of chasing after five more minutes of escape from the world. It’s all a cycle. A terribly tiring one. One with no break. I’ve tried everything. Non-stop running, movie marathon without blinking, hypnosis, sleeping pills and none of it does any good. Not to mention the classic counting sheep. If I do recall, I reached up to seven hundred and fifty-six thousand, four hundred and twenty-six godforsaken sheep feeling so homicidal that it wasn’t safe for them to keep jumping over the fence in my mind. But my memory’s a bit hazy; it was at least eighteen months ago that this all began. It was so sudden. Without any reason or excuse. And so far without end.
In some feeble attempt to make my life seem ordered I try to make twenty-four hours distinguishable. I try to create my own yesterdays and tomorrows. The yesterdays I have no control over, but I cannot help but wonder if tomorrow is ever going to come. Do I even want it to? When you have insomnia, nothing is real, and nothing is fake. Everything just is. You find yourself detached from the world, or not so much from the world but from yourself. Like you’re watching all the events unfold from an omniscient perspective, yet still from your own eyes. It’s damn near impossible to explain the complexities. Day and night, light and dark, they’re both as wretched as the other. During the day you’re so lifeless you feel like a ghost, the only thing you can think about is how amazingly peaceful sleep would be. During nighttime, still the only thing on your mind is sleep, only there is nothing to even vaguely distract you from it, only taunt you by reinforcing the fact that you can’t have it. It’s unbearably patronizing, but you have no choice but to bear it. There’s no escape from it.
I tossed and I turned, but nothing extraordinary, like sleep, happened. This was just another night. Another long, seemingly never-ending night. Only I knew it would come to an end. Just not a happy one. This night would end; the sun would rise, and tomorrow would commence just the same as every tomorrow that has become a yesterday has done.
But did it have to? What if tomorrow never did come? What if I’ve completely been going about this the wrong way? All these months I’ve been praying for night to just end. What if, instead of waiting for it to cease, I made it stay forever? Instead of living in doubt, knowing that there is a chance this will stop just not sure if I have it… What if I made the decision? What if I called the shots? What if I made it stretch on for eternity? For my eternity.
Maybe I was just all drugged up from ineffective sleeping pills. Maybe I was sleepwalking, because after so long I was just so goddamn tired. Maybe I actually had gone crazy from lack of sleep. Choose your scenario. The doctors chose theirs. Doctor’s words aren’t truth. Just beliefs with evidence to strengthen them. But the doctors decide what would make evidence for their diagnosis, so really it just brings it back to their own belief and names difficult to pronounce. They found me passed out with a cold-hearted bullet in my upper arm. That’s right. Passed out. I was going for suicide, but the fact that I failed was a minor vexation when I was so ecstatic to find out that I’d been knocked out for ten hours due to unbearable pain. Sure, being unconscious isn’t exactly the same as being asleep, but it’s close enough for me. Why I thought that a bullet in the arm would kill me, I do not know. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I must have had pretty poor aim, seeing as apart from a deep flesh wound, I was going to be okay. Physically. They’re afraid I’ll try it again though. The doctors, I mean. I guess it’s rational for them to worry about that. If I go back to insomnia after this, I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it. When I came to, everything was real again. I was a person again, rather than a body with eyes to see things from. Faces were distinguishable, voices and words held meaning. After getting this taste of a real life again, I don’t think I could handle going back.
I haven’t tried to sleep yet. I’m scared of failure. I’m scared of myself if I were to fail. I don’t know what I’m capable of anymore. I’m only praying that this has been enough to force my body to return to normal.